OpenAI has seen a shake-up in its leadership since last night. And these historical changes could have several different reasons.
Today, OpenAI is a company developing an extremely powerful product like ChatGPT without any real direction. Because yesterday, its historic boss Sam Altman was dismissed by the board of directors. And today, it was his number 2 Greg Brockman who decided to leave. But why all this fuss, when everything seemed to be working perfectly, with development of the ChatGPT product seemingly limitless? Several hypotheses are possible.
A rumored secret project?
In announcing Sam Altman’s ouster from his post, OpenAI used a significant phrase. The board of directors, after an examination procedure, would have “ concluded that he had not always been frank in his communications with the board of directors. »
More clearly, he allegedly lied to the council. But on what? To justify such a sudden change, Sam Altman would have to have negotiated behind the scenes, with perhaps only Greg Brockman, a very large operation, like a very large buyout. Or did he seek to make OpenAI independent of Microsoft, which would have scared the rest of the leaders?
Is Sam Altman spending too much money?
Because Microsoft is all the more essential as OpenAI spends a lot of money. And maybe even too much. The operation of ChatGPT has indeed an exorbitant cost, due to the computing power necessary to ensure its use.
Would Sam Altman not have taken these financial problems into account, by seeking to develop new functions ever more quickly, which would increase the firm’s expenses even more? A few days ago, he himself announced a suspension of registrations for ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI being unable to offer its services to all those who wanted them. Has the CEO ignored the accounting problems so much that he frightened the board of directors?
Irreconcilable ethical differences on AI?
Sam Altman’s latest interventions at ChatGPT showed that his ambition was to make AI viable by developing a large number of services. It thus led OpenAI more and more into a path where development was commercial, with perhaps fewer ethical safeguards.
It is significant that the board revolt was led by chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Would the latter have considered that Sam Altman’s commercial ambitions had reached such a point that he could create too dangerous an AI in the future?
A simple “coup d’état”?
Finally, and this is perhaps the simplest explanation (but not necessarily the truest), it could be a simple palace revolution. It is interesting to note that Sam Altman was fired overnight, without seeing anything coming, while his number 2 Greg Brockman was the only one on the board of directors not to have been informed of the situation.
According to the same Greg Brockman, Mira Murati was the only one on the management team who knew what was coming. She has since replaced Sam Altman as CEO. Did she, along with Ilya Sutskever, lead a coup?
Source : Tedcrunch
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